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About 60 percent said it hindered students’ ability to write and communicate face to face, and almost half said it hurt critical thinking and their ability to do homework.

Other teachers said technology was as much a solution as a problem.

By 2021, schools must offer diplomas based students reaching proficiency in the four core academic subject areas: English, math, science and social studies. By 2025, four additional subject areas will be included: a second language, the arts, health and physical education.

proficiency-based idea has also created headaches at some schools for teachers trying to monitor students’ individual progress.

Students have more flexibility to learn at their own pace and teachers get time to provide extra help for students who need it

It wasn’t for lack of trying,” Bowen said. “It was a systems design problem.”

offer students clarity about what they have to learn and how they are expected to demonstrate they’ve learned it.

Deciding to believe that all students are capable of learning all of the standards, she said, “was scary.”

We inherited a structure for schooling that was based on time and on philosophical beliefs that learning would be distributed across a bell curve,

get crystal clear about what we want students to know and be able to do and then how to measure it.”

One facet of our reading instruction that cannot be overlooked is the importance of teacher readers in building a classroom reading community. According to Morrison, Jacobs, and Swinyard (1999), "perhaps the most influential teacher behavior to influence students' literacy development is personal reading, both in and out of school."

If we don't read, why should our students?

Share your reading life with your students. Show your students what reading adds to your life. If you are reading a nonfiction book at the moment, tell them what you are learning. Pass the children's books you are reading to them when you are done. Describe the funny, sad, or interesting moments in the books you read. When you read something challenging, talk with your students about how you work through difficult text. It will surprise them that you find reading hard at times, too, but choose to read, anyway.

Many students in today's world do not read books outside of school. When they do read, it is text-messages, web pages or homework assignments. For students who did not grow up in homes with books, with adults who read and who read to them, this time to read in school is both necessary and pleasurable. Many of my students need catch-up time when it comes to "hours-in" reading. The 10 minutes at the beginning of each period that I allow my juniors each day equals hours of reading across the months of the school year. My most dedicated readers begin books in the classroom, finish them at home, and return to the classroom/school library to check out new books.